Olympus meets deadline to avoid delisting

Former Olympus president Michael Woodford speaks before Japanese lawmakers at the headquarters of opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Tokyo yesterday

Scandal-hit Olympus yesterday filed its delayed earnings report to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, avoiding an automatic delisting that would have wiped out the value of the 92-year-old company.
Shortly after the Tokyo bourse closed for the day, the company revealed it had lost 32.3 billion yen (USD 414 million) in the first half of the year, amid a massive accounting scandal that has badly tarnished the image of Japan Inc.
The loss by the camera and medical instrument maker compares with a net profit of 3.81 billion yen for the same period a year earlier.
Two months to the day after Olympus dumped British chief executive Michael Woodford for his complaints about apparent gaping holes in the balance sheet, the company pledged to mend its ways.
“It has been revealed that our company had announced false financial statements by delaying reporting losses from stocks and other investments,” it said in a statement.
“The third-party committee [established to probe the scandal] pointed to problems with our corporate governance.
“Our company will... try to carry out fundamental reforms in order to achieve recovery of trust as quickly as possible.”
Olympus said it could not issue an outlook for its earnings for 2011 as a whole because it could not yet determine how the problems would affect sales.
The 32.3 billion yen net loss this year was due mainly to one-time losses caused by market deterioration, Thai floods and a decline in the book value of its business assets, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
Olympus missed its initial November 14 deadline for releasing its latest earnings results. The Tokyo Stock Exchange had warned its shares would face delisting if the company failed to report them by December 14.
Shares in the company, which is facing several legal and regulatory investigations as well as a class-action lawsuit filed by a US investor, are worth about half their value before Woodford’s ouster.
The volatile stock closed down 4.08 percent at 1,314 yen yesterday.